​Germany to beef up counter-espionage against US, Western allies – report

Following decades of a heavily subdued program, Germany is planning to resume counter-espionage against both the US and other Western allies in response to ongoing revelations surrounding NSA’s global surveillance practices, Der Spiegel reports.

Another primary motivation for the resumption of surveillance is
US reluctance to agree to a no-mutual-spying treaty desired by
Germany, the reports suggests.

The beefed up program will include more active tracking of US
agents operating within Germany’s borders. British embassies – as
well as those of the US – could also be targeted, according to
the report.

“This step would be an about-face from the decades-long
practice of systematically monitoring the activities of countries
such as China, Russia and North Korea but rarely the activities
of Western partners,” read Spiegel’s assessment of the
situation.

One of the revelations considered to be most serious was the fact
that the US was monitoring a non-governmental cell phone used by
German Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to the files leaked by
Edward Snowden, the German Chancellor’s mobile phone has been on
an NSA target list since 2002 and was codenamed “GE Chancellor
Merkel.” Surveillance and communication equipment installed on
the roofs of both the US and British embassies in the capital was
also deeply criticized.

Head of the German domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt
für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen suggested last
November that active operations may be stepped up in the wake of
the news. Germany was required to “adjust counter-espionage
and take a 360-degree view,” according to Maassen.

In January, Germany called for less rhetoric and more action in
the wake of President Obama’s pledge to stop spying on world
leaders. While the announcement was greeted with optimism,
politicians said it had been “too little, from a German point
of view.”

Mere days afterwards, former NSA contractor and whistleblower
Edward Snowden chose the German ARD broadcaster to give his first
TV interview, stating that: “There is no question that the US
is engaged in economic spying.”

Clemens Binninger, part of Merkel's Christian Democrats party,
said that in regards to the discrepancies between countries
surveilled, Germany needs to “cease the differentiation and
treat them all the same way.”

Chancellor Merkel said on Saturday in her weekly podcast that
herself and French President Francois Hollande would review plans to build up a trustworthy data
protection network in Europe.

She aired her disapproval of companies such as Google and
Facebook, basing their operations in countries with low levels of
data protection, while in reality being active in countries with
high data protection.

“Above all, we'll talk about European providers that offer
security for our citizens, so that one shouldn't have to send
emails and other information across the Atlantic. Rather, one
could build up a communication network inside Europe,” she
said.

In the wake of the revelations about US global spying activities,
Merkel has become one of the biggest supporters of greater data
protection making it mandatory for ministers to use encryption on their phones to secure their
communications against intrusion.

However, before the new counter-intelligence plan comes into
effect, an agreement must be reached between Merkel‘s office, the
Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, Der Spiegel reports.